MUGSHOT

(a photograph of Trevor, Barry and Peter taken in the Cleveland Art Gallery on the occasion of a visit to Dunedin by the poet Barry Southam)

These three desperados,
Huey, Duey and Luey
are finally cornered
in an art gallery
admiring women's art,
& trying to hide behind
dark glasses and beards
and ingenious baldness.

dark coats wrapped around
bodies as if to hide (not
their sexuality)
but leftover poems,
halfchewed sandwiches,
rejected images:
disappointments of
the most hideous kind!

These three desperados wait --
their true time is yet to come,
nude paintings will fall
from the sky,
poetry will be pure & sweet
& direct from the lips
(the presses will print money
not poems)
galleries will be named after them,
Reeves Wing
Southam Academy
Olds hall

Women will worship
the ground they stand on,
& they will love the things
they make
(as Baxter once said)
more than hey love
themselves

Like an epiphany
at the South Pole,
Scott, Wilson
& Bowers, know
(as their picture is taken
before the journey back)
they're not going to make it.

PAMELA ANDERSON AT ST CLAIR BEACH

The seagulls on the balustrade rail
are waiting me to die
watching me with their beady eyes

They want my body
they say 'we love your sandwich
we love your eyes'

There are ten seagulls waiting to tear me apart

I'm looking for sharks
I'm waiting for a shark to get a surfer

While the seagulls have their backs
to the pink churning water
their thoughts will be on my lunch &
I'll be witnessing the greatest event to hit
St Clair since the sea wall was destroyed
by the tsunami last August

I finish my sandwich without leaving a crumb
Pamela Anderson walks by eating a chocolate icecream

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